PRESS RELEASE
NAIROBI Friday 17th August, 2018… Let us continue including women in our development plans, they lead in a great way, Says Lands and Physical Planning CS, Farida Karoney.
“When you empower women and have them them in positions of influence, you empower communities.” Says Ms. Karoney.
The lands CS spoke this week when she opened the annual Regional Centre for Mapping of Resources for Development (RCMRD) International Conference 2018, held at the RCMRD regional headquaters in Kasarani, Nairobi.
Ms. Karoney emphasized on land use planning and land use policy. “These policies address key development challenges that the country is grappling with.” Said the lands CS.
She said that land is a finite resource and policy makers must continue to encourage sustainable land use planning and management.
“We recently launched a National Land use Policy as well the National Spatial Plan, sending a clear message to all Stakeholders about the need to balance human settlement, food security needs with responsible exploitation of our environment.” Said Ms. Karoney.
The lands CS said that the National Land Use Policy gives a context within which we must anchor our development aspirations both at the National and County levels.
She said that the National Spatial Plan policy will streamline land use across the Country. “Implementation of spatial plan and particularly monitoring compliance will require input from earth observation technologies and applications.” Said Ms. Karoney.
She said that her Ministry is actively engaged in modernizing land administration platforms as well as streamlining processes and procedures to ensure efficient and effective delivery of land services to citizens and investors in Kenya. “We aim to enhance transparency and ease of doing business n Kenya.” said the lands CS.
“The Government considers earth observation and space science products and applications as critical in implementing its Big four Agenda, more specifically in Agriculture and food security as well as ensuring access to decent shelter by all Kenyans.” Said the CS.
Ms. Karoney said that the goal of the Government is to see enhanced opportunities for employment and wealth creation for the youth, sustainable use of land and land based resources, safe and livable cities as well as food and economic security.
“It is my hope that RCMRD and their partner’s at this conference will continue to work with Government of Kenya to ensure these skills and capabilities are transferred to our personnel both at National and County government levels.” Said Ms. Karoney.
The Lands CS also launched ISO 9001:2015 and RCMRD eLearning platform at Regional Centre for Mapping of Resources for Development.
In attendance was Chief Administrative Secretary for Lands, Hon. Gideon Mungaro and Director of Administration, Amb. Julius Kandie.
Regional Centre for Mapping of Resources for Development (RCMRD) is an inter- governmental organization with 20 member states in Eastern and southern Africa region.
Its mission is to promote development through generation, application and dissemination of Geo-information and allied ICT services and products in member states beyond.
The theme of this years conference is ‘Space Science for Sustainable Development’.
The workshop brought different stakeholders drawn from the academia, applications and software developers, hardware manufacturers, geospatial data producers and vendors, researchers, policy makers and media to promote synergies and complementarities that are essential to transforming science to actual benefits.
Joseph K.Mwangi
Head/ Public Communications
